“Miramax Films and MGM will co-produce a contemporary retelling of Akira Kurosawa’s classic saga of dueling Japanese warlords, ‘The Seven Samurai,'” Yahoo News reports. “One of the Japanese auteur’s most influential films, ‘Seven Samurai’ first got the Hollywood treatment in 1960 when John Sturges remade the picture as a Western, ‘The Magnificent Seven,’ with an all-star cast, including Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson.”

Miramax Films co-chairman Harvey Weinstein described ‘Seven Samurai’ as ‘the mother of all “guys on a mission” movies.’

MGM and Miramax haven’t yet determined whether the remake will be set in Asia, the West, or some other contemporary context. MGM will distribute domestically, while Miramax will handle its international release.

Why? Why, why, why? Didn’t Burton’s Planet of the Apes atrocity teach you coked-up movie execs (no offense to Brian Linse) anything?

And for the record, wouldn’t the “mother of all ‘guys on a mission’ movie (however dated and abhorent the mission, mind you) be D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation…?

If you’re going to remake something as iconic as ‘Samurai’ today, you’re almost forced to go all-out funky with it. Like, use the entire original cast of “Saved by the Bell,” and set the story at Screech’s family reunion. Here’s the pitch: an extended family of gangly, annoying geeks is besieged by a marauding band of professional wrestlers and their entourages (the WWF folks rented the hall for a wedding party, but because of some SNAFU by Mr. Belding, the hall is double-booked, with Screech’s relatives entitled to first dibs). Wearied and frightened, Screech enlists the aid of Zach, A.C., Kelly, Jessica, Lisa, and Mr. Belding to defend his family, offering only handfuls of rice pudding as payment.

Stars Dustin Diamond, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, Mario Lopez, Elizabeth Berkley, and “The Rock.”

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